Post navigation

Opera singers in VIVIENNE WESTWOOD couture

Australia’s largest annual arts event – Sydney Festival 2013 – has transformed Sydney Town Hall into a spectacular location to host a unique musical and visual collaboration we rarely get a chance to see. Opera singers all dressed up in crazy outfits designed by the mother of punk, Vivienne Westwood!

After premiering at the Herrenhausen Festival in Germany, Semele Walk arrived to Sydney opening the doors for this one-of-a-kind music theater created for hungry fashionistas and opera lovers.

Imagine listening to arias performed by singers mingling with models on the catwalk, all wearing giant platform shoes, extravagant clothes and dramatic hairstyles.

I never stopped being surprised during the evening. I have hardly digested the fact that an 18th century baroque opera written by George Frideric Händel merges with haute couture fashion from the 21st century, when the musicians and conductor actually also came on stage and took part in the show. On the top of this, at a certain point even the members of the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs revealed themselves sitting in the audience turning into wonderful solos!

“The music is from a really adven­tur­ous Berlin cham­ber ensem­ble called Kalei­doskop – they play clas­si­cal music but they’re actu­ally really adven­tur­ous and don’t mind try­ing to mix say Han­del music with some punk. So it was their idea to team up with West­wood to do this ver­sion of Han­del’s opera, Semele. The col­lab­o­ra­tion resulted in a vision to actu­ally stage the opera as a fash­ion walk so what you get is a huge fash­ion parade cel­e­brat­ing both Westwood’s designs and the opera itself.” -reveals Syd­ney Fes­ti­val Direc­tor in an interview to the Fashion Journal.

I hope too that the fashion opera becomes a tradition in Sydney, big thanks to the Festival organisers for this amazing experience.